Kung Fu and Love

Kung Fu and Love
A great gift for Valentine's day or Chinese New Year

Sunday, January 31, 2016

Crouching Tiger Hidden Dragon for Chinese New Year

They're showing Crouching Tiger Hidden Dragon on Movieplex.... over and over and I was pretty excited to see that it was in Mandarin on my American TV. But I didn't put it together that they were probably doing this because it is Chinese New Year season until I saw that it was still on. AFer all Kung Fu Panda 3 came out for Chinese New Year season too. I'm telling you, because of China's strength, Chinese New Year is totally an international holiday now. Plus it's cool anyway.

It's funny because I was just telling Grace that Chinese New Year has some developing to do. I mentioned that there weren't really any Classic New Year movies. Dong Sing Sai Jau, comes to mind, but it's like China jumped straight from real hard core traditional stuff, to straight hardcore sell out commercial stuff.

I didn't really think of Crouching Tiger as a Chinese Movie, but I guess from an American standpoint, it would work. But you really want something funny. I bet Kung Fu Panda 3 will really be the ultimate Chinese New Year movie in America and in China, for a while.

As many smart Chinese People as there are, I think that because of the politics in China, and also the politics here in America fro Chinese Americans... well there isn't a Chinese Charles Dickens who wrote a Chinese New Year novella. I saw a cute little video and there are legends and stories that are similar... but they don't seem to have become a thing yet.

The Chinese New Year music blasting at that 88 food court market today was the type of techno craziness that China and Eastern Euro countries formerly part of the Soviet bloc have in common. It's a different taste, or perhaps slight numbness of taste if not lack of.


And so the famous international Chinese Cultural movie I'm watching on tv, was directed by a Taiwanese director.


Crouching Tiger Hidden Dragon

You know, when I first watched this movie, I was watching it as a Chinese American that did Kung Fu and watched a lot of Kung Fu movies. As a Kung Fu movie, it is out of place in terms of how the other movies were a the time. That's why internationally it did very well, but mainlanders, hated it and said it was really a Lo Fahn Kung Fu movie.



Now as I am watching it, I can actually watch it as a Lo Fahn, and if you look at it from the mytholigical story telling of the West.. it's actually pretty awesome.

And it's true, it's not really a Kung Fu movie at all. I would argue that most of the shit that happens in this movie in terms of Kung Fu is not only "unrealistic" it is alternate realistic. I mean it's not even really happening.

Now when you watch this movie in hindsight, remember that Ang Lee would later win his big awards for Broke Back Mountain. What's that about? Hidden sexual repression.

Crouching Tiger has some actual real sex. But I would argue that most of the Kung Fu is also sex.

The Green destiny sword. What is it? What is a man's sword? Even in Romeo and Juliet you hear this sort of Julie is my Sheath for my dagger etc.

So Zhang Ziyi steals Chow Yun Faht's manhood err His sword.

There is a scene (the famous one) where Zhang Zi Yi is fighting Michelle Yeoh in a Moh Goon show down with all the weapons. Zhang Zi Yi touches the blade of the sword.  as it rings out. She's been holding it this whole time, fighting with it, but when she touches the blade part.. that is full of innuendo and Michelle can't take it. "That's Lu Mu Bai's! (dick which belongs to me....if only in a spiritual way)" Because where as Zhang zi yi has real sex with the bandit from the desert, Michelle and Chow Yun Faht have been meditating and sipping tea instead, being spiritual lovers.


Zhang Zi Yi runs away with the sword and Chow Yun Faht follows her an dhere comes the bamboo scene. This totally doesn't really happen either. Don't even talk about the Hing Gung. JUst look at how the faces fade in and out like subconscious images. It's a day dream fantasy, except somehow the man and young girl are communicating. She fantasizes about him. But he takes his sword (manhood) and says she doesn't even deserve it and throws it in the river. A dark figure then takes her (Jade Fox). She's totally like your typical disney witch. She's also a trickster Fox. she now has the manhood and says that she and Zhang Ziyi can "be their own masters." There's some kind of lesbian thing with that. I'm not imagining it. Plus remember Broke Back Mountain might have been a way to look at it from a new perspective, where homosexuality is scene as heroic or right instead of having Jade Fox, the Villain be the one suggesting that. Jade Fox is sore because the Master slept with her, but didn't treat her as an equal human being, (i.e. teach her Wudan style sword) But it's totally not really about swords. It's about relationships.

Jade Fox drugs Zhang Zi Yi with horny lustful ecstacy and sets a trap for Chow Yun Faht. Now the sex almost comes out into the open, But Chow Yun Faht is too moral and doesn't take advantage of the girl.

Instead he puts it in her.

His chi that is. So he shows her love on a spiritual level. Jade fox tries to kill everyone but is killed. (Does she even exist or is she just the crazy dark side of adolescent hormones manifesting themselves as a person? Whatever same thing. She's gone now.)

So Zhang sees that her spiritual parental figures, love her and now she tries to help.


Okay I watched the movie ou of order too so I'm going to jump back to when Zhang Zi Yi is wreaking havoc in the bar. It seems unrealistic that a young girl could be so much better than all those masters. It wasn't just the sword it was her too. How could her Kung Fu be so strong?

In the movie it is.

And in real life, if Kung Fu  is sex, passion, and love, then many young girls do make fools of respectable powerful men, making them crash all over the place at bars and tear a whole house down. That shit happens every weekend, except if you can control that, then your club can make money off of this instead of being in tatters. In fact even that iron arm guy that she outs... there can be a lot read into that.. your not all that hard. lol

So in the end she jumps off a cliff and her lover seems happy and unconcerned about it because in the movie, people can kind of fly, in anycase she isn't committing suicide.. and in real life she is just doing that leap of faith he talked about earlier. She doesn't choose fer home life, or a life where she runs away with him, she chooses to find her own path. Today that would be some sort of career woman or personal journey that young girls do all the ime. Starting a company or backpacking through Africa, whatever.


Anyway, I want to read the novel the movie was based on, though all this crazy stuff is probably ONLY Ang talking. I'm just saying it's kind of cool to look at it from a mythological context. It's deep. It's just not that Chinese.

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